Friday, February 27, 2009

I came across the Eno tune "Spider & I " in a recently downloaded mix & I was reminded of how much I like Eno's voice. So I thought why not collect some favorite vocal tunes together in one place.

For the first half of the mix I alternate between vocal tunes & instrumentals. I thought this might be nice to break things up a bit. About half way through I realized I'd run out of time so I went to all vocals. I love singing along with his songs & it is nice to have some favorites all together.

The title comes from Genesis' "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" album, where Eno is credited with "enosification." Which he described this way..."I would take existing instruments and feed them through various devices to 'weird them up'."

I mentioned that I heard Eno in a mix, of course I can't remember which mix it was, but I do want to mention a coiple fine mixes that I've downloaded recently. One comes from Brian Bieniowski & can be found here...asphalteden. The other is called "Utsura-Utsura" and can be found here DREAMSCENES

It's very moody, very ambient, just a little jazzy. Very much like the wonderful release from Arve Henriksen last year. I wanted this mix to have a moody, melancholy, late-night jazz feel. Although I have used some of these artists in other mixes this is the first jazz mix for Low Light mIxes. I wasn't sure what to expect when I began but it turned out fairly well.

It didn't take long to put together because it's not a sound collage like the last mix. But I think the tunes flow nicely together. Sometimes sitting around with a good scotch, you need soemthing with a jazzy flavor & I hope this works for that while remaining true to the Low Light feel. Next up...an all Eno mix.

Monday, February 16, 2009

I have been wanting to do another field mix almost since the moment I finished the last one. So here it is, a new mix entitled "in_transit".

I like field recordings but not as much nature recordings. I'm not wild about birds chirping & water flowing. I like mechanical sounds or crowd noise or as you'll hear in this mix, trains. I used train sounds in the last mix & they play a prominent role here too.

I had planned on doing more of my own field recording but I just never seemed to find the time. I did manage to sneak two of my recordings in, one occurs at about 8:50 in the mix. It's a recording of the telephone pole at the end of my driveway. The pole hums when it gets windy, so I just went out there, stuck the mic right up to the pole & froze my arse off. I then fattened up the sound a bit.

The other recording is of my daughter playing piano, but you'd never guess that's what you're hearing. It happens at about the 19:10 mark. I had her play about 40 seconds of chopin or schubert. Then I used a simple little program to stretch that 40 seconds into 12 minutes & 40 seconds. The result sounds nothing like classical piano. You can find the program here...Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch. Give it a try. Works great on piano & classical music. It makes the human voice sound very creepy.

Most of the other sounds used in the mix are a combination of music, field recordings from all over the web & music that already has field recordings built in, like the last cut by RF. There is new music from sleepy town manufacture & unit 21, elegi, Loren Chasse & terje isungset.

Two tracks used in the mix are from a cd that I got from Rick over at Hydrogen Cafe. Years ago he burned some ambient background sounds from Blade Runner. At the 6:20 mark we get ambience from the Tyrell Coporation & at about 23:50 we hear sounds from Blade Runner Chinatown. I'll definitely be using more of these in future field mixes.

Well I guess that's enough for now. I'm not making a tracklist as the cuts are playing all over each other, many times 2 or 3 at the same time. If you are curious about certain sounds or tracks just email or comment with the time of the mix & I'll do my best to get info back to you.